March 30, 2023 • 19 mins
A pair of letters signed by more than 1,000 people (maybe) argue that we need to slow down before developing more advanced artificial intelligence models. Plus, did Google cheat off OpenAI's work to build out Bard? And SBF stands accused of bribing Chinese officials to the tune of 40 million dollars.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
are you? It's time for the tech news for Thursday,
March thirtieth, twenty twenty three. So Apple has announced that
(00:28):
this year's Worldwide Developer Conference, or WWDC, will run from
June fifth to June ninth. The conference is an event
where app developers go and learn how to best use
Apple's technologies while they're designing apps for Apple devices. But
it's also an event where the company occasionally shows off
(00:50):
new products. Now, typically those are software features and that
kind of thing, as opposed to physical hardware. But yeah,
WWDC is sort of an event where stuff can be
unveiled or launched, usually something about like an operating system
or again some features that will enhance apps, but once
(01:13):
in a while they'll show off some hardware. And this
year there is a great deal of anticipation that Apple
will finally show off its mixed reality headset at WWDC.
So the version that Apple is going to show off,
if it does in fact show it at all, is
a more modest effort than what was originally planned. So
(01:35):
Apple's goal was to create an augmented reality headset that
looked like a stylish but otherwise normal pair of eyeglasses.
But it turns out that cramming that many components into
so small a form factor is a challenge we just
can't overcome yet. Gordon Moore might smile and say, just
wait a couple of years on that one. So instead,
(01:57):
the mixed reality headset is reportedly one that has a
display built into it with cameras that would feed live
video to the display when you have it in AR mode,
and otherwise you'd be using it like a VR headset.
So in other words, when you wear this headset and
you're using it as an augmented reality headset, what you're
doing is watching a live video feed of whatever it
(02:19):
is in front of your face, just like if you
were holding your phone up in front of your eyes.
The logo for WWDC twenty three doesn't give any clues
as to whether or not they will show this off.
The logos just a series of colorful, metallic style arcs,
kind of like a Wi Fi signal symbol. Rather, last
I heard, analysts expect that Apple's headset will go on
(02:40):
sale later this year in the holiday season for a
really hefty price tag, like you know, three grand or
something Moreover, while the hope was to follow this up
with the AAR glasses, that plan is on indefinite hold
at the moment. Instead, Apple plans on releasing an updated
and perhaps less expensive headset further down the line. So yep,
(03:04):
we're gonna be waiting a while till we get those
cool iron Man style eyeglasses. Now let's talk a whole
lot about artificial intelligence. So first up, an advoticacy group
called the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy sent
a letter to the US Federal Trade Commission, or FTC,
(03:26):
asking that agency to stop any more commercial releases of
products that use GPT four, which is the latest of
the large language models developed by open Ai. This is
interesting because the FTC is about stuff like consumer protection
and ensuring fair trade practices. So what's going on here. Well,
the advocacy group claims that GPD four is quote biased, deceptive,
(03:51):
and a risk to privacy and public safety end quote.
Now the bit that would really concern the FTC would
be the deceptive part if a company where to leverage
GPT to generate false claims about products or services that
amounts to false advertising. The group says that GPT four
isn't quote transparent, explainable, fair, and empirically sound while fostering
(04:14):
accountability end quote. These are standards that the FTC otherwise
demands when it comes to trade. More than one thousand
people reportedly signed this letter. Meanwhile, there's a different letter,
this one from the Future of Life Institute, which is
a nonprofit organization that says it's dedicated to pushing technology
(04:34):
to benefit humanity and to reduce the risk of you know,
like existential annihilation. Also, it has a similar message In
this letter. The letter calls for an immediate pause on
quote training of AI systems more powerful than GPT four
end quote. That pause, the letter says, should be at
least six months while people take a closer look and
(04:57):
evaluate the risks associated with these AI models. The letter
points out that the technology greatly outpaces governments and their
ability to create laws and regulations meant to safeguard citizens.
That's true, that's kind of how it always works, honestly,
But the point that the letter is making is that
the risks of AI could end up being too severe
(05:19):
to just do the normal move fast and break things
approach to tech and let law catch up later. The
letter is an open letter, so it's not like a
letter that's being sent to a specific entity. Also, when
it was sent, it had more than one thousand, one
hundred signatories on it, including some really famous names on there,
like Steve Wozniak at Elon Musk. But at least some
(05:43):
of the folks whose names appeared on that list have
since spoken up to say they never actually signed the
ding dang darn thing, which should definitely at least raise
some eyebrows. A chief AI researcher and meta named Jan
Lakun is one of the folks who says he never
signed the letter, and in fact, he disagrees with the
letter's premise. So something hanky's going on here. I know
(06:06):
we can't trust the robots, but now it sounds we
can't trust the peeps who say we can't trust the robots.
Y'all know, lots of teachers worry about how students could
potentially use chat GPT in an effort to avoid doing
work themselves, essentially you know, cheating off a chatbot. You
know about that, right, Well, according to the information, a
(06:28):
former Google AI researcher has said that Google's kind of
doing the same thing, just at a much bigger scale. Namely,
this researcher, named Jacob Devlin, has accused Google's AI team
of cheating off rival open ais GPTEAM model. The information
says that, according to Devlin, the Google team was scraping
(06:48):
data from open ais share gpt website in an effort
to have training material for its own barred chatbot AI.
Google's Chris Papas told The Verge that the company didn't
use any data from share GPT or chat gpt to
train Bard. So Google is outright denying these allegations. Now,
(07:12):
there is no denying that Google was caught with its
artificial intelligence pants down when chat gpt took the world
by storm late last year, and Google has scrambled its
various teams to try and make up for lost ground.
According to the information, this actually extends to convincing teams
from two different AI initiatives under Alphabet that's the parent
(07:35):
company that Google is under, and that would be Google's
Brain AI team and an independent like subsidiary, Deep Mind.
That typically these two groups are rivals, they don't really
work well together, or they don't often work together at all,
and the Deep Mind has been rumored to be looking
(07:58):
to actually completely spin off from the company for a
while now, but at the moment their efforts appeared to
be aligned as they try to catch up to open Ai.
Not too long ago, I mentioned in the news episode
that Google was under investigation for allegedly destroying evidence relating
to its legal fight against you know, a whole bunch
(08:19):
of folks that includes Epic Games. That's the company that's
behind Fortnite, the Match Group attorneys general for thirty eight
of the fifty states that we have here in the
good old US of A. The lawsuits are focused on
Google's policies with its app store, arguing that the company
has engaged in anti competitive and exclusionary practices that hurt well,
(08:41):
pretty much anyone who ain't Google, really. But as to
evidence tampering, those accusations have led to a federal judge
ruling that Google did intentionally destroy evidence and so it
must be sanctioned. The judge stated that quote Google intended
to subvert the discovery process and that chat evidence was
(09:02):
lost with the intent to prevent its use in litigation
and with the intent to deprive another party of the
information's use in litigation quote. So essentially, what the judge
is saying is that Google purposefully did not instruct any
document custodians within its company to turn on the chat
history feature. So by default, Google's chat deletes its chat
(09:27):
history after twenty four hours, but you can turn this off,
and if you do turn it off, then it maintains
that chat history. So what the judge is saying is
that Google tried to be coy and deny that it
was hiding evidence by not admitting that the chat histories,
which could be you'll saved and used as evidence, were
(09:48):
set to automatically delete, and that you know, that was
just a regular policy, there was nothing wrong with that,
and that, of course they didn't even think to tell
their custodians to turn on chat history. As to what
punishment the judge will meet out to Google, that has
yet to be decided. For one thing, until the judge
can figure out what and how much was deleted, it's
(10:08):
actually pretty hard to determine the extent to which Google's actions,
or lack thereof, in the case of not turning on
chat history, have actually hurt the prosecution's case, but in
the meantime, Google does have to cover the legal fees
for the prosecution. Google has protested this ruling, saying its
policies fall under the restrictions of what is reasonable under
(10:29):
federal rules, and of course this is just a corollary
to the actual legal case, which itself will continue. Okay,
we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be back
with more tech news in just a moment. While Google
(10:53):
defends itself against accusations of being anti competitive, it is
accusing Microsoft of being anti competitive. In this case, Google
says that Microsoft's cloud computing businesses are designed to discourage competition,
and further that Microsoft's recent negotiations with cloud vendors in
Europe are going to make things worse. The arguments are
(11:14):
giving me a lot of deja vu, actually, because essentially
the critics are saying that Microsoft ties its various products
together in such a way that's very hard to mix
and match with other vendors, Like you can't easily and
seamlessly incorporate whichever products you want from whichever vendors you want.
(11:34):
Because the various systems are designed to interlock together. That
Microsoft's approach is really intended to keep customers within the
Microsoft ecosystem, relying on things like Windows for on premises
computing systems and Azure in the cloud. And the reason
I say this gives me deja vu is that back
in the nineties, Microsoft was accused of doing something really
(11:55):
similar by tying its web browser, which was Internet Explorer
at the time time, with the Windows operating system. This
practice was seen as anti competitive because it discouraged Windows
users from seeking out alternatives to Internet Explorers, such as
Netscape Navigator. This whole thing led to a massive antitrust
lawsuit against Microsoft. In fact, at one point, the United
(12:18):
States government even ordered Microsoft to break up into smaller companies,
but that ruling was subsequently reversed. Anyway, Google says Microsoft
is following that old playbook, only now it's looking at
enterprise customers and cloud services instead of regular consumers, and
Google is hoping that regulators and the EU will take
a closer look and perhaps intervene. Also fun fact, Google
(12:42):
is in third place when it comes to being a
cloud service provider. First place goes to Amazon, then Microsoft,
then Google. So would Google behave in a way that
was more competitive and would not be exclusionary? I guess
we'll have to wait and find out our old pal.
Sam Bankman freed AKASBF as another charge against him. Now
(13:06):
do you remember him. He's the co founder of FTX,
which used to be the second largest crypto exchange in
the world before it had a spectacular collapse late last year.
SPF already faces multiple securities and fraud charges, but this
new one is different. This time, he's accused of having
bribe Chinese officials to unfreeze assets connected to his cryptocurrency companies.
(13:29):
This appears to have happened before the collapse of FTX,
so apparently Chinese officials froze the assets as part of
a probe into quote a particular Alimeda trading counterparty end quote.
The size of the bribe is a staggering forty million
dollars yauza. Think about that for a second. Think about
(13:50):
having so much money tied up that you're willing to
spend forty million dollars to get that money. Meanwhile, I'll
just be over are just trying to imagine what forty
million dollars looks like. Anyway, This means OLSBF is now
looking at thirteen major charges in the wake of his
FTX disaster, and he's still going with a not guilty plea,
(14:13):
despite the fact that his FTX co founder Gary Wong
has already pled guilty to charges of wire securities and
commodities fraud. Moving on to TikTok, there's a small stable
of politicians who oppose the growing calls or a nationwide
ban against the social video platform here in the US.
The newest member of that group is Senator Rand Paul,
(14:35):
a Republican politician who is one of the few conservative
voices to speak out against a ban on TikTok. Paul
has expressed concern that a band could lead to restrictions
on free speech. He's also expressed concern that should the
government ban TikTok, young folks will sour on the Republican
(14:56):
Party and the GOP will find itself out of a job.
So this isn't all about standing up for the rights
of citizens here. There's a healthy dose of self preservation
going on. Now. I've said in the past that I
do have real concerns about TikTok, and I still do.
But I also have real concerns about data security and
privacy in general, and as many others have repeatedly pointed
(15:18):
out China doesn't exactly need an app on the inside
of the US in order to get hold of our data.
China could just do what the FBI does and buy
data from data brokers. So yeah, the problem with security
and privacy is much, much, much larger than TikTok itself,
and really we need to have an approach that gets
(15:39):
to the source of the problem, which, in my opinion,
is our irresponsible approach to personal data, which extends all
the way to matters of national security, and that the
app is just built on top of this, this massive
vulnerability we have. It's not the cause of that vulnerability,
it's just potentially exploiting it. One of the proposals that
(16:02):
could potentially ban TikTok is called the restrict Act. Now
I've yet to read this bill myself, but according to
Motherboards sources, the language in it is too vague and
too broad and could lead to massive problems down the road.
So the purpose of the bill is to give the
US government the authority to restrict communication services that have
(16:24):
connections to foreign countries. And by connections, I think what
is implied is at least foreign ownership. But as Motherboards
Joseph Cox points out this could potentially extend not just
to social networks and messaging apps and that kind of thing,
but perhaps to other stuff like VPNs or virtual private networks. Apparently,
the bill says that technology linked to a quote unquote
(16:47):
foreign adversary would be subjected to this proposed restriction. That
includes countries like Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela.
And it also covers a lot of different kinds of software,
including stuff like games and payment applications. Now, I hope
to read the full bill soon, even though reading proposed
(17:08):
legislation often makes my head hurt or it puts me
to sleep. But the objections here sound like there are
some real legit concerns that the bill could lead to overreach,
and worse, failed to address the root cause of the issue,
so we would still have the problem there, and this
bill would not solve the problem. It would just cause
(17:30):
more issues. EA aka Electronic Arts is joining the ranks
of companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Twitter in that
it's laying off employees. According to The Wall Street Journal,
the layoffs will affect around six percent of the company's workforce.
That means around seven hundred eighty employees could be shown
their walking papers. According to a blog post published by
e A CEO Andrew Wilson, one of the reasons for
(17:53):
the layoffs is that EA is looking to reduce its
actual office space, and it means that some folks just
won't have a place to work at anymore. Those affected
are promised severance pay and healthcare support as they transition,
which is the decent thing to do. How this will
affect game development remains to be seen, but at the
risk of sounding like a broken record, sure do hate
(18:13):
seeing more folks getting laid off. Finally, Valve, a different
video game company, has announced that beginning on January first,
twenty twenty four, it's popular game platform and online store,
Steam will no longer work on machines running on Windows
seven or Windows eight. Microsoft itself stopped supporting those operating
systems earlier this year, so Steam is actually a little
(18:34):
bit behind on that regard, But this means that gamers
are still using older versions of Windows to access their
Steam library of games will need to upgrade before next
year or face the very real prospect that they won't
be able to play their Stardo Valley anymore, which y'all,
Star Doo Valley is a fantastic game. No one out
there wants to be deprived of their Stardus Valleys. All
that being said, as you would probably imagine, this is
(18:56):
going to impact a very small number of Steam custom
According to Valve, fewer than two percent of all Steam
customers are on platforms using Windows seven or Windows eight.
But if you are time to upgrade, all right, that's it.
That's the news for Thursday, March thirtieth, twenty twenty three.
I hope you are all well out there, and I'll
talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
(19:26):
iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
are you? It's time for the tech news for Thursday,
March thirtieth, twenty twenty three. So Apple has announced that
(00:28):
this year's Worldwide Developer Conference, or WWDC, will run from
June fifth to June ninth. The conference is an event
where app developers go and learn how to best use
Apple's technologies while they're designing apps for Apple devices. But
it's also an event where the company occasionally shows off
(00:50):
new products. Now, typically those are software features and that
kind of thing, as opposed to physical hardware. But yeah,
WWDC is sort of an event where stuff can be
unveiled or launched, usually something about like an operating system
or again some features that will enhance apps, but once
(01:13):
in a while they'll show off some hardware. And this
year there is a great deal of anticipation that Apple
will finally show off its mixed reality headset at WWDC.
So the version that Apple is going to show off,
if it does in fact show it at all, is
a more modest effort than what was originally planned. So
(01:35):
Apple's goal was to create an augmented reality headset that
looked like a stylish but otherwise normal pair of eyeglasses.
But it turns out that cramming that many components into
so small a form factor is a challenge we just
can't overcome yet. Gordon Moore might smile and say, just
wait a couple of years on that one. So instead,
(01:57):
the mixed reality headset is reportedly one that has a
display built into it with cameras that would feed live
video to the display when you have it in AR mode,
and otherwise you'd be using it like a VR headset.
So in other words, when you wear this headset and
you're using it as an augmented reality headset, what you're
doing is watching a live video feed of whatever it
(02:19):
is in front of your face, just like if you
were holding your phone up in front of your eyes.
The logo for WWDC twenty three doesn't give any clues
as to whether or not they will show this off.
The logos just a series of colorful, metallic style arcs,
kind of like a Wi Fi signal symbol. Rather, last
I heard, analysts expect that Apple's headset will go on
(02:40):
sale later this year in the holiday season for a
really hefty price tag, like you know, three grand or
something Moreover, while the hope was to follow this up
with the AAR glasses, that plan is on indefinite hold
at the moment. Instead, Apple plans on releasing an updated
and perhaps less expensive headset further down the line. So yep,
(03:04):
we're gonna be waiting a while till we get those
cool iron Man style eyeglasses. Now let's talk a whole
lot about artificial intelligence. So first up, an advoticacy group
called the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy sent
a letter to the US Federal Trade Commission, or FTC,
(03:26):
asking that agency to stop any more commercial releases of
products that use GPT four, which is the latest of
the large language models developed by open Ai. This is
interesting because the FTC is about stuff like consumer protection
and ensuring fair trade practices. So what's going on here. Well,
the advocacy group claims that GPD four is quote biased, deceptive,
(03:51):
and a risk to privacy and public safety end quote.
Now the bit that would really concern the FTC would
be the deceptive part if a company where to leverage
GPT to generate false claims about products or services that
amounts to false advertising. The group says that GPT four
isn't quote transparent, explainable, fair, and empirically sound while fostering
(04:14):
accountability end quote. These are standards that the FTC otherwise
demands when it comes to trade. More than one thousand
people reportedly signed this letter. Meanwhile, there's a different letter,
this one from the Future of Life Institute, which is
a nonprofit organization that says it's dedicated to pushing technology
(04:34):
to benefit humanity and to reduce the risk of you know,
like existential annihilation. Also, it has a similar message In
this letter. The letter calls for an immediate pause on
quote training of AI systems more powerful than GPT four
end quote. That pause, the letter says, should be at
least six months while people take a closer look and
(04:57):
evaluate the risks associated with these AI models. The letter
points out that the technology greatly outpaces governments and their
ability to create laws and regulations meant to safeguard citizens.
That's true, that's kind of how it always works, honestly,
But the point that the letter is making is that
the risks of AI could end up being too severe
(05:19):
to just do the normal move fast and break things
approach to tech and let law catch up later. The
letter is an open letter, so it's not like a
letter that's being sent to a specific entity. Also, when
it was sent, it had more than one thousand, one
hundred signatories on it, including some really famous names on there,
like Steve Wozniak at Elon Musk. But at least some
(05:43):
of the folks whose names appeared on that list have
since spoken up to say they never actually signed the
ding dang darn thing, which should definitely at least raise
some eyebrows. A chief AI researcher and meta named Jan
Lakun is one of the folks who says he never
signed the letter, and in fact, he disagrees with the
letter's premise. So something hanky's going on here. I know
(06:06):
we can't trust the robots, but now it sounds we
can't trust the peeps who say we can't trust the robots.
Y'all know, lots of teachers worry about how students could
potentially use chat GPT in an effort to avoid doing
work themselves, essentially you know, cheating off a chatbot. You
know about that, right, Well, according to the information, a
(06:28):
former Google AI researcher has said that Google's kind of
doing the same thing, just at a much bigger scale. Namely,
this researcher, named Jacob Devlin, has accused Google's AI team
of cheating off rival open ais GPTEAM model. The information
says that, according to Devlin, the Google team was scraping
(06:48):
data from open ais share gpt website in an effort
to have training material for its own barred chatbot AI.
Google's Chris Papas told The Verge that the company didn't
use any data from share GPT or chat gpt to
train Bard. So Google is outright denying these allegations. Now,
(07:12):
there is no denying that Google was caught with its
artificial intelligence pants down when chat gpt took the world
by storm late last year, and Google has scrambled its
various teams to try and make up for lost ground.
According to the information, this actually extends to convincing teams
from two different AI initiatives under Alphabet that's the parent
(07:35):
company that Google is under, and that would be Google's
Brain AI team and an independent like subsidiary, Deep Mind.
That typically these two groups are rivals, they don't really
work well together, or they don't often work together at all,
and the Deep Mind has been rumored to be looking
(07:58):
to actually completely spin off from the company for a
while now, but at the moment their efforts appeared to
be aligned as they try to catch up to open Ai.
Not too long ago, I mentioned in the news episode
that Google was under investigation for allegedly destroying evidence relating
to its legal fight against you know, a whole bunch
(08:19):
of folks that includes Epic Games. That's the company that's
behind Fortnite, the Match Group attorneys general for thirty eight
of the fifty states that we have here in the
good old US of A. The lawsuits are focused on
Google's policies with its app store, arguing that the company
has engaged in anti competitive and exclusionary practices that hurt well,
(08:41):
pretty much anyone who ain't Google, really. But as to
evidence tampering, those accusations have led to a federal judge
ruling that Google did intentionally destroy evidence and so it
must be sanctioned. The judge stated that quote Google intended
to subvert the discovery process and that chat evidence was
(09:02):
lost with the intent to prevent its use in litigation
and with the intent to deprive another party of the
information's use in litigation quote. So essentially, what the judge
is saying is that Google purposefully did not instruct any
document custodians within its company to turn on the chat
history feature. So by default, Google's chat deletes its chat
(09:27):
history after twenty four hours, but you can turn this off,
and if you do turn it off, then it maintains
that chat history. So what the judge is saying is
that Google tried to be coy and deny that it
was hiding evidence by not admitting that the chat histories,
which could be you'll saved and used as evidence, were
(09:48):
set to automatically delete, and that you know, that was
just a regular policy, there was nothing wrong with that,
and that, of course they didn't even think to tell
their custodians to turn on chat history. As to what
punishment the judge will meet out to Google, that has
yet to be decided. For one thing, until the judge
can figure out what and how much was deleted, it's
(10:08):
actually pretty hard to determine the extent to which Google's actions,
or lack thereof, in the case of not turning on
chat history, have actually hurt the prosecution's case, but in
the meantime, Google does have to cover the legal fees
for the prosecution. Google has protested this ruling, saying its
policies fall under the restrictions of what is reasonable under
(10:29):
federal rules, and of course this is just a corollary
to the actual legal case, which itself will continue. Okay,
we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be back
with more tech news in just a moment. While Google
(10:53):
defends itself against accusations of being anti competitive, it is
accusing Microsoft of being anti competitive. In this case, Google
says that Microsoft's cloud computing businesses are designed to discourage competition,
and further that Microsoft's recent negotiations with cloud vendors in
Europe are going to make things worse. The arguments are
(11:14):
giving me a lot of deja vu, actually, because essentially
the critics are saying that Microsoft ties its various products
together in such a way that's very hard to mix
and match with other vendors, Like you can't easily and
seamlessly incorporate whichever products you want from whichever vendors you want.
(11:34):
Because the various systems are designed to interlock together. That
Microsoft's approach is really intended to keep customers within the
Microsoft ecosystem, relying on things like Windows for on premises
computing systems and Azure in the cloud. And the reason
I say this gives me deja vu is that back
in the nineties, Microsoft was accused of doing something really
(11:55):
similar by tying its web browser, which was Internet Explorer
at the time time, with the Windows operating system. This
practice was seen as anti competitive because it discouraged Windows
users from seeking out alternatives to Internet Explorers, such as
Netscape Navigator. This whole thing led to a massive antitrust
lawsuit against Microsoft. In fact, at one point, the United
(12:18):
States government even ordered Microsoft to break up into smaller companies,
but that ruling was subsequently reversed. Anyway, Google says Microsoft
is following that old playbook, only now it's looking at
enterprise customers and cloud services instead of regular consumers, and
Google is hoping that regulators and the EU will take
a closer look and perhaps intervene. Also fun fact, Google
(12:42):
is in third place when it comes to being a
cloud service provider. First place goes to Amazon, then Microsoft,
then Google. So would Google behave in a way that
was more competitive and would not be exclusionary? I guess
we'll have to wait and find out our old pal.
Sam Bankman freed AKASBF as another charge against him. Now
(13:06):
do you remember him. He's the co founder of FTX,
which used to be the second largest crypto exchange in
the world before it had a spectacular collapse late last year.
SPF already faces multiple securities and fraud charges, but this
new one is different. This time, he's accused of having
bribe Chinese officials to unfreeze assets connected to his cryptocurrency companies.
(13:29):
This appears to have happened before the collapse of FTX,
so apparently Chinese officials froze the assets as part of
a probe into quote a particular Alimeda trading counterparty end quote.
The size of the bribe is a staggering forty million
dollars yauza. Think about that for a second. Think about
(13:50):
having so much money tied up that you're willing to
spend forty million dollars to get that money. Meanwhile, I'll
just be over are just trying to imagine what forty
million dollars looks like. Anyway, This means OLSBF is now
looking at thirteen major charges in the wake of his
FTX disaster, and he's still going with a not guilty plea,
(14:13):
despite the fact that his FTX co founder Gary Wong
has already pled guilty to charges of wire securities and
commodities fraud. Moving on to TikTok, there's a small stable
of politicians who oppose the growing calls or a nationwide
ban against the social video platform here in the US.
The newest member of that group is Senator Rand Paul,
(14:35):
a Republican politician who is one of the few conservative
voices to speak out against a ban on TikTok. Paul
has expressed concern that a band could lead to restrictions
on free speech. He's also expressed concern that should the
government ban TikTok, young folks will sour on the Republican
(14:56):
Party and the GOP will find itself out of a job.
So this isn't all about standing up for the rights
of citizens here. There's a healthy dose of self preservation
going on. Now. I've said in the past that I
do have real concerns about TikTok, and I still do.
But I also have real concerns about data security and
privacy in general, and as many others have repeatedly pointed
(15:18):
out China doesn't exactly need an app on the inside
of the US in order to get hold of our data.
China could just do what the FBI does and buy
data from data brokers. So yeah, the problem with security
and privacy is much, much, much larger than TikTok itself,
and really we need to have an approach that gets
(15:39):
to the source of the problem, which, in my opinion,
is our irresponsible approach to personal data, which extends all
the way to matters of national security, and that the
app is just built on top of this, this massive
vulnerability we have. It's not the cause of that vulnerability,
it's just potentially exploiting it. One of the proposals that
(16:02):
could potentially ban TikTok is called the restrict Act. Now
I've yet to read this bill myself, but according to
Motherboards sources, the language in it is too vague and
too broad and could lead to massive problems down the road.
So the purpose of the bill is to give the
US government the authority to restrict communication services that have
(16:24):
connections to foreign countries. And by connections, I think what
is implied is at least foreign ownership. But as Motherboards
Joseph Cox points out this could potentially extend not just
to social networks and messaging apps and that kind of thing,
but perhaps to other stuff like VPNs or virtual private networks. Apparently,
the bill says that technology linked to a quote unquote
(16:47):
foreign adversary would be subjected to this proposed restriction. That
includes countries like Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela.
And it also covers a lot of different kinds of software,
including stuff like games and payment applications. Now, I hope
to read the full bill soon, even though reading proposed
(17:08):
legislation often makes my head hurt or it puts me
to sleep. But the objections here sound like there are
some real legit concerns that the bill could lead to overreach,
and worse, failed to address the root cause of the issue,
so we would still have the problem there, and this
bill would not solve the problem. It would just cause
(17:30):
more issues. EA aka Electronic Arts is joining the ranks
of companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Twitter in that
it's laying off employees. According to The Wall Street Journal,
the layoffs will affect around six percent of the company's workforce.
That means around seven hundred eighty employees could be shown
their walking papers. According to a blog post published by
e A CEO Andrew Wilson, one of the reasons for
(17:53):
the layoffs is that EA is looking to reduce its
actual office space, and it means that some folks just
won't have a place to work at anymore. Those affected
are promised severance pay and healthcare support as they transition,
which is the decent thing to do. How this will
affect game development remains to be seen, but at the
risk of sounding like a broken record, sure do hate
(18:13):
seeing more folks getting laid off. Finally, Valve, a different
video game company, has announced that beginning on January first,
twenty twenty four, it's popular game platform and online store,
Steam will no longer work on machines running on Windows
seven or Windows eight. Microsoft itself stopped supporting those operating
systems earlier this year, so Steam is actually a little
(18:34):
bit behind on that regard, But this means that gamers
are still using older versions of Windows to access their
Steam library of games will need to upgrade before next
year or face the very real prospect that they won't
be able to play their Stardo Valley anymore, which y'all,
Star Doo Valley is a fantastic game. No one out
there wants to be deprived of their Stardus Valleys. All
that being said, as you would probably imagine, this is
(18:56):
going to impact a very small number of Steam custom
According to Valve, fewer than two percent of all Steam
customers are on platforms using Windows seven or Windows eight.
But if you are time to upgrade, all right, that's it.
That's the news for Thursday, March thirtieth, twenty twenty three.
I hope you are all well out there, and I'll
talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
(19:26):
iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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